There Are Only Our Ancestors

There are only our ancestors
There are no others on the tree of life 
Only uncles and aunties and cousins and old folks
The ones we wish were at the table with us
And the ones who pushed us away from home

There are only our ancestors
No other ancestors but our own ancestors
Invaded the lands of our ancestors
Silenced the stories of our ancestors
And then our ancestors wrote those stories down in big books
(poorly and without all the good parts)
In words our ancestors couldn’t read

There are only our ancestors
And it has only ever been our ancestors
Who killed our ancestors
And our ancestors who smashed the temple stones
Of our ancestors
Who salted our fields
Who stole our children
Who escaped and returned home
Through the help of our ancestors

There are only our ancestors
Who taught us how to forgive
Only our ancestors who taught us how to hate
Who taught us when to look away
And when to stare our ancestors in the face
And see our ancestors looking back

There are only our ancestors
Who tore down the mangroves
And it was only our ancestors who replanted them
Only our ancestors who fought for us
To live and breathe in a world familiar and unknown

There are only our ancestors 
And there are only our descendants
No one else will fill up the hills but us
And we’ll only find our ancestors there
Because there is no other
There never has been, never will

There are only our ancestors

How strange for us to forget

How beautiful for us to remember

A Might-do List for the Autumn Equinox

The Autumn Equinox, known also as Mabon, Alban Elfed, Ingathering, and Harvest Home, for a variety of Pagans, it’s a beautiful celebration of the end of the most abundant point of the harvest season. Continuing a project started at Lughnasadh, here’s list of nine things that you might-do (or not) for the Autumn Equinox and the season of Mabon.

Go apple-picking. The Second Harvest is also known as the Apple Harvest and some of my favorite years spent celebrating the season have been when I’m apple to go picking apples. And cutting an apple lengthwise to reveal the pentagram within is a very fun sort of magick. If apple picking isn’t available in your area, celebrate with other seasonal fruits.

Have a festive meal with friends and family. Getting together for celebratory harvest feast with your friends and family is a wonderful way to celebrate the start of Fall. The Second Harvest of the season is sometimes called Harvest Home and for many Pagans, myself included, it’s the choice time of year to hold a big friends and family feast. It’s also a time to be aware of and address the fact that we live in a world where there is enough food to eat but not everyone gets access to the table. Events like Pagan Pride in September gather food and supplies in order to support community members in need and you can spend time (perhaps after your Autumn cleaning), donating goods to local shelters. Even better, get involved with local efforts to create long-term sustainable support for folks struggling with homelessness and the many issues that intersect with it.

Perform a tree blessing. Honor the trees that surround you with a blessing. Whether through song, incense, water or other earth-friendly biodegradable offerings, honor the trees which shade us, provide food and shelter, oxygenate our air, and contain the wisdom of the ages. Get involved with local and global tree conservation efforts as a way to live your gratitude.

Cast a spell for community resiliency. Work local magick for your local community. Whether performed in your backyard, bedroom altar or local sacred site, in a rising tide of global misinformation and conflict, working spells of peace for our neighborhoods is powerful stuff.

Rebalance your days and nights. As the Equinox is an equal point between day and night, so we can look at our lives and assess where we need more balance. Whether that’s clearing extra activities from our schedule, going to bed or rising earlier, choosing to step into our lives and out of our screens more, 

Autumn cleaning. While spring cleaning is a more well-known practice, it’s just as important to clean up and clear out before the cold settles in. It can be a time of pulling out warmer clothes (including donated extra clothing to charities and shelters), making sure the house is winter weather ready, and energetically shifting the space to support you in the dark of the year.

Attend Pagan Pride! September is the month of Pagan Pride celebrations. It’s a great way to connect with community, attend public rituals outside of your tradition, donate goods to local charities, and generally have a good time. 

Cut cords. It’s an auspicious time of year from now til Samhain to cut the cords that bind you and entangle you to people, places, and ideas that no longer serve you. While I use the terminology “cutting cords” it’s a similar energetic practice to uncrossing work, a taking off or receiving a limpia and other culturally specific cleansing practices. All of this energetically aligns with the ebbing energy between now and the Third Harvest - where we cut away what is no longer necessary in our life and choose only to carry with us we love and need as we go to meet our ancestors between the worlds.

Study + practice ancestral traditions. Speaking of ancestors, it’s a beautiful time of year to spend in study and practice of ancestral traditions. An ancestral English custom for late September was singing and shouting at the end of harvest, decorating the home with boughs of grain, and transforming the last standing sheaf in the field as the cailleac, a corn dolly that would be kept in a place of honor until the spring season of planting. Learning of our ancestral heritage (and I speak of this in the broad sense of biology, culture, and spiritual ancestors), is one way that we open up lines of communication with our ancestors. We reverberate the web with our curiosity and the web sings back. 

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Our next might-do list is going to be all about the season of Samhain. Looking for even more magick for Mabon? Check out my Autumn Equinox tarot spread as well as healing and magickal practices for the fall. You can also check out the rest of my might-do lists for the sabbats and beyond.

• Samhain

• Winter Solstice (Yule)

• Imbolc

• Spring Equinox (Ostara)

• Beltane

• Summer Solstice (Midsummer)

• Lughnasadh

• Autumn Equinox (Mabon)

Friends, may the season of Mabon bring you closer to the ones you love and the abundance of a joyful harvest.

Dreaming with the High Priestess

It was the High Priestess that taught me how to look into and beyond the images presented in the tarot. When I began my tarot studies with my Smith-Waite deck - at an age that feels both more distant and yet just passed at the same time - I followed the instructions in my first tarot book to perform a pathworking (i.e. a western esoteric tradition word for guided meditation that originated from specific practices of moving along the paths of the Tree of Life as illustrated in Kabbalah) with each card. I did just that and it’s something I’ve continued to do in my own practice and have taught it to my students, too, because I think it is so useful in magickal and healing work. As I was learning this pathworking technique, there were some cards that were my favorite to travel into and the High Priestess was and is one of them. 

Perhaps it is the watery nature of the card that my Piscean heart adored or the fact that I knew early on in my life that I was to one day take vows of a Priest/ess/x. It was an easy, dreamy card for my little witchling self to connect with and I loved learning about the symbolism of the card from the pomegranate’s on the fabric behind the High Priestess, to the Moon beneath their feet, and the pillars framing the scene. 

Decks shown are the Brady Tarot + Smith-Waite Centennial Edition

Then, one journey into the card, I was overwhelmed by the sound of the sea. Suddenly I saw what had remained hidden, but seemed so obvious now. The sense of vastness I got whenever I journeyed into the card was not just because the High Priestess represented a library of arcane wisdom that I was so eager to read, but that they were, more importantly, a keeper of the gates of which beyond was a vast sea to explore. I had been looking at the card all this time but not really seen it - in the process, I had missed an entire world beyond the surface of my initial viewings of the image. 

Such is the way of things, right? We think we are seeing all of it until we look again and find that the world is far more vast than originally thought. As a card of Moon, a representation of our consciousness, the High Priestess teaches us how to connect with the vastness both around and within us through the lunar path of dreamwork. Even more importantly, the High Priestess does this in a way that’s not about keeping secrets or revealing them, but teaches us, instead, how to read our world and discern knowledge through observation.

One of the primary herbs that I use to connect with the energy and healing magick of the High Priestess is Mugwort (Artemisia spp.). My favorite way to work with Mugwort is through herbal baths - I’ve shared a recipe for just that below. Tarot has long been rich in plant imagery and the Smith Waite deck illustrated esoteric knowledge of plants through its art, adding yet another layer of knowledge to the intricately layered world of the cards. If you’re enjoying all of this talk of plants and herbs, you can check out my full profile for the High Priestess from my course, The Tarot Apothecary, by joining my free Magick Mail newsletter. You’ll then gain access to a member’s only page full of recipes, rituals, and more. 

The High Priestess profile from The Tarot Apothecary

Mugwort Dream Bath

Mugwort is one of the most revered of dreaming herbs in the western materia medica. I am lucky to live in a part of the world where native and migrating versions of the plant thrive, which is why I use three varieties in my dream bath blend. I prefer to bathe with Mugwort when it comes to dreamwork, but for those of you who feel more tethered to the waking world than the one of dreams, you might also try it in tea form. 

I included Anise Hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) in the blend for a number of reasons, not least of which for its lovely smell. It’s a plant of Mercury with Venusian energies meaning that it helps us clear out and connect our pathways of communication (Mercury) through gentle, warming, and uplifting methods (Venus). It has a bit of a guardian energy to it, too, which is always useful in dream work and exploring the vastness of our inner realms.

Juniper Berries (Juniperus communis) round out the blend with their rich purple-black color reminding me of the Dark of the Moon. Juniper serves as a holy herb for burning in Celtic cultures, clearing the air of impurities and cleansing the energetic body. The plant helps us to remember our dreams and understand what they mean. As a Dark of the Moon herb, Juniper assists us in connecting to our depths through dreamwork. 

Decks shown are the Many Queens Tarot and the Numinous Tarot

I combined roughly equal parts of the following herbs, but adjust the amounts of each herb depending on what you have available. If you don’t have multiple varieties of Mugwort to use, simply use more of the variety that you do have.

• Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris)

• Dream Plant (Artemisia douglasiana)

• California Mugwort (Artemisia californica)

• Anise Hyssop (Agastache foeniculum)

• Juniper Berries (Juniperus communis)

Use 1/2 to 1 cup of herbs for a bath. I brew the herbs ahead of time in a jar, strain out the herbs, and add the infusion to my bath water (you can get all my tips and tricks for herbal baths, including bathing with herbs without a bath here). After a dream bath, I suggest going right to bed, spending some time journaling or maybe even pulling a few cards before heading off to sleep. For an extra layer of magick, you can even build a little dream altar ahead of time featuring the High Priestess and a dream pillow full of Mugwort to keep beside you bed.

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I hope you’re feeling inspired to look deeper into your tarot cards and, in turn, deeper into yourself. Using dreamwork as a tool of self-discovery is not only effective, but an ancient way of self-knowing. May you seek and find your High Priestess waiting for you to see beyond.

A Might-do List for Lughnasadh

A few years back the idea of a might-do list kept showing up in my world and I was immediately enamored with the concept. As someone who can make a list that turns more into a marathon than an appropriately paced daily jog, I really like the concept of being able to keep my beloved list-making habit while softening my obligation to it. Doing this has actually changed the ways I make lists and plan out my year for the better. 

What makes a might-do list different than a to-do list is that by its very nature you’re not supposed to try and do all the things on that list. It is more like a collection of inspiration to help remind you of how it is you want to be spending your time, not how you think you should be spending your time.

Being a Pagan and celebrator of the Wheel of the Year, I thought I would put together a might-do list for the season of Lughnasadh. Notice that I put season and not just Sabbat. These are activities that you might choose to do on the days of Lughnasadh (also known as First Fruits, Lammas, Lúnasa, Calan Awst, amongst many other names) or spread them out between the First Harvest and the festival of Mabon. 

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One more note. In the time of climate crisis and the increasing anxiety that comes with it, we need to draw ourselves closer to the earth rather than farther from it. Of course, as a Pagan, I think we all need to become conscious of our roots in ways that have been previously lost due to assimilation, colonization, and the survival skill of forgetfulness that is so keenly humxn. But hopefulness and the important knowing the one is always in a web of interconnectedness comes about when we take time to re-acquaint ourselves with the seasons of the year, of our lives, and our revolutions.

So here is my list of nine things you might do or not for the season of Lughnasadh.

Perform a harvest blessing. Magickally welcome in the start of harvest season with blessings and offerings to the spirits of the land and waters. 

Have a day of playing cooperative and competitive games with your friends and family. Lughnasadh is traditionally a Gaelic festival and in Ireland, funerary games in honor of the Goddess Tailte (who is Lugh’s foster-mother and one of the reasons for the season) were played. Beyond Lughnasadh, the myth of Inanna and Ereshkigal is another powerful teaching myth of the season.

Visit a festival or faire. The First Harvest is a time of celebration and community gatherings so go out and enjoy a festival or faire in and around your part of the world. Also, protests to bring about a more kind and just world are always relevant to attend!

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Support local community efforts and/or raise some funds for your favorite organizations. Since we’re celebrating the hard work of making a bountiful harvest possible, be sure to get out there and support the hard work of others, too. Support food banks, healthy food programs in school, and other food security initiatives are great places to start.

Visit a pick-your-own farm. Support local farms, enjoy whatever seasonal back goods they have to offer, and enjoy a day out harvesting good food for the months ahead (because heck yeah to freezing bucketloads of fresh fruit for autumnal crisps later on in the year).

Harvest your own garden grown fruit, veg, and collect seedheads. In the days leading up to Lughnasadh I really enjoy harvesting herbs, fruits, and vegetables from our family garden to use in the Sabbat feast. Learn how to collect and save seeds for future harvests. I also start creating gifts that I’ll give for Yule. 

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Practice some seasonal divination. From watching the weather of August to predict the weather of the coming months or using corn kernels for answering yes and no questions to inquiries about one’s health. Lughnasadh by Melanie Marquis is a good resource for these and other Lughnasadh divinatory traditions.

Practice gratitude and create hopeful harvest cards to share. Honor that which you are grateful for and reflect on all the ways you have grown this year. Pull out your journal or book of mirrors and list all the things you’ve done, big or small, plan and unplanned, and be sure to take time to celebrate and feel these accomplishments in your bones. If you want, create your own variation of the Hope Cards described in Circle Round: Raising Children in Goddess Traditions: 

“Ask the children to think about what they hope to harvest, literally or symbolically, and help them make cards that represent those hopes. They can draw on construction paper or any scrap paper, or create collages from magazines, greeting cards, and old calendars.

All the cards are put into a basket and shuffled. Then each child draws a card. The card each child receives becomes a symbol of luck and blessing for the harvest. And by giving away our hopes, we are asking the Goddess to help them be fulfilled.”

Honor and reaffirm your interconnectedness with the land. The First Harvest is a time of honoring our inherent reliance and relationship to the abundance of the land. Ask yourself how you will care for, re-engage with, and defend the health and vitality of the land. This is something that is wonderful to do in a ritual setting with friends and family.

I look forward to continuing the “might-do” series with the next sabbat, Mabon. If you’re looking for more Lughnasadh season magick, check out my tarot spread for the First Harvest and a wider look at the magick and herbal healing arts of summer. You can also check out the rest of my might-do lists for the sabbats and beyond.

• Samhain

• Winter Solstice (Yule)

• Imbolc

• Spring Equinox (Ostara)

• Beltane

• Summer Solstice (Midsummer)

• Lughnasadh

• Autumn Equinox (Mabon)

Many blessings of the start of harvest season to you and your community.

You Only Need to Know One Tarot Spread

I try and be honest about my mistakes as a tarot reader (and as an herbalist for that matter) but here’s a tip from the successful endeavors archives - I think every tarot reader, especially when starting out, should commit to learning one type of spread really well.

Using one type of spread consistently over an extended period of time (a year and a day is a or thirteen cycles of the moon are both magickal time frames). This doesn’t mean you don’t use other types of spreads, but that you use on spread predominantly.

Learn how to use one spread for a variety of questions. I know some card slingers create new spreads for each new question that comes their way or has different types of spreads for different themes (such as a spread for romantic inquiries versus one for career questions). There is definite merits to both of these styles. But when learning tarot or re-connecting with your practice, I encourage you to choose one spread for almost all if not all of your questions.

By using one spread you are creating a magickal map that is just familiar enough to help you navigate the unfamiliar (i.e. the answer to your questions). 

Being familiar enough with a spread that you don’t have to reference a guide book to cast it. With this skill you’ll be able to improvise around the depth of each position. So, for example, one card in your spread of choice might represent “the past” and over time with different inquiries the past may represent everything from actual events that have happened previously to how a problem may have appeared to you previously or past mindsets.

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The Herbcrafter’s Tarot by Latisha Guthrie + Joanna Powell Colbert

The spread I started learning with was the Celtic Cross Spread which is a tarot spread from the western esoteric tradition developed thought to be developed by Florence Farr a magician, feminist, and seer of the Order of the Golden Dawn. It’s a tricky spread, not only because there are many different versions and suggested ways of interpreting the card positions, but also because there are quite a few cards being read at once. Yet, it remains one of my favorite spreads to read with because it feels so familiar. A common mistake some tarot readers make is using too many spreads that they are unfamiliar with. What ends up happening is that you are not only reading the cards but learning the dynamics of a spread all at once. And that’s a lot for anyone to contemplate at once. 

The other spread that I use a lot is the pentagram spread which has a card for each of the five elements of earth, air, fire, water, and spirit. From this spread, I’ve developed all sorts of variations over the years, including the spread that follows. What I hope to illustrate with The Elemental Guardian Spread is how one spread can be read many ways starting with the simple and queerly-forward to the more complex.

While this spread can be used with any deck, I was inspired to create it after getting to play with The Herbcrafter’s Tarot co-created by herbalist and bruja Latisha Guthrie and artist Joanna Powell Colbert (of Gaian Tarot fame). Being not very up on following all the up and coming decks as I’ve been spending less time on the internets (sharing lots about that in Magick Mail), I saw this deck and purchased it on a whim just before it was released because I saw a card that featured dyeing with plants and I’m just that easy to please some days… The way that the deck is set-up (there are no humxn figures shown, only arms and hands of diverse shades, ages, and sizes doing herbcrafty things in the court cards) inspired this spread. If you want a full review of the deck check out Benebell Wen’s enthusiastic endorsement of what is fast becoming one of my favorite decks, too.

The spread consists of five foundation cards - four Elemental Guardians and a central card that is the Heart of the Matter. For the first two ways of casting the spread, the variation lies in how you choose the cards. The final way placing the cards incorporates four additional cards to the mix, building on the original spread foundation. And if all this talk of elements and tarot and herbalism has got you excited join me in The Tarot Apothecary.

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Background image by Annie Spratt

The Elemental Guardians Spread

I’ve listed my tradition’s interpretation of the elements, but feel free to apply your own elemental interpretations.

Card 1. The Guardian of Air speaks to and represents the realm of East, communication, ideas, inspiration, the impact of new technologies and social media in our lives, our mental health, our studies, and the ways that we perceive and comprehend our experiences.

Card 2. The Guardian of Water speaks to and represents the realm of the West, dreams, visions, our lineage both behind us (ancestors) and before us (descendants), and the ways we feel and empathize with our experiences.

Card 3. The Guardian of Fire speaks to and represents the realm of the South (northern hemisphere) or North (southern hemisphere), passions and desires, ecstasy, our creative health, and the ways we transform and express our experiences.

Card 4. The Guardian of Earth speaks to and represents the realm of the North (northern hemisphere) or South (southern hemisphere), prosperity and success, our personal legacy, inheritances including cultural traditions and epigenetics, our physical health, and the ways we physically process and energetically digest our experiences.

Card 5. The Heart of the Matter summarizes the energy of the spread and helps you to find the language to understand what is happening to you and what you might carry forward with all that you have learned. Sometimes it can be a holy reminder of something you have forgotten or need to pay more attention to. Other times it is a love letter. Often it’s a mix of everything I’ve just described.

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The Herbcrafter’s Tarot by Latisha Guthrie + Joanna Powell Colbert

First Variation - Choosing Your Heart

Set up your deck by finding all of the Court Cards and sorting them by suit (i.e. place the King, Queen, Knight, and Page of Wands in one pile and the King, Queen, Knight, and Page of Cups in another pile and so on). The first cards you will cast are the positions of the Elemental Guardians and you’ll be pulling these from their corresponding Court Card piles. For example, pull the first card for The Guardian of Air from one of the four Sword Court Cards. Proceed in the same manner for the following three Elemental Guardian cards.

The fifth and final card is pulled one of three ways. You can either pull it from the rest of the deck sans the Court Cards, just the rest of the Minor Arcana or just the Major Arcana. If you’re working on a big life issue, I suggest pulling from the Major Arcana. Or not. Follow your intuition when making your choices. 

The Second Variation - Elemental Balance

The second variation for this spread changes the way that the Elemental Guardian cards are chosen. Instead of choosing an Elemental Guardian card only from its corresponding elemental Court Cards (i.e. choosing the Air Elemental Guardian card only from the Suit of Swords), you’ll choose each Elemental Guardian card from all sixteen Court Cards.

This variation means that you can find conversations happening between the elements. Let’s say that you pull a Page of Cups as your Fire Elemental Guardian - this could indicate that the fiery parts of your life need to be tempered by water. The Page of Cups suggests approaching your emotions with a student’s state of mind and to get curious about what you’re feeling - something which can be difficult when we’re feeling fired up or hot-headed.

What I like about the second variation is that it reflects the reality that there is no strict division between elemental energies in our life but instead all of the elements flow and dance and crash together. If you are someone who incorporates elemental balance into your magickal and/or spiritual practice, this is a fun variation to try.

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The Herbcrafter’s Tarot by Latisha Guthrie + Joanna Powell Colbert

Third Variation - Drawing In Shadows

The third variation adds four extra Shadow cards to the mix. Proceed with casting the spread using any of the variations as described, but beside each of the Elemental Guardians, cast a Shadow card from the rest of the deck. While the Guardian cards describe your gifts and strengths, your shadow card for each element highlights a challenging aspect of that elemental area of your life.

Let’s say that you pull the Seven of Pentacles as your Shadow card for Earth. As a Shadow card, the Seven of Pentacles can show indecision about what do to with your hard won harvest and difficulty coming up with a long-term vision for what you’re trying to accomplish. Sometimes the Seven of Pentacles shows up as a card warning that you’re falling into the trap of imposter syndrome - especially when it is inverted. If you pulled the Knight of Pentacles as your Guardian of Earth the cards could be suggesting that you need to take time to connect with a truer version of who you are and what you’re capable of. 

“Through the wisdom of {the Elemental Guardian message} I understand/acknowledge/release/embrace {shadow card lesson}.”

Taking our previous example you might construct the following interpretive sentence:

Through the wisdom of seeking a true vision of myself I release the belief that I am somehow not enough.

Part of the power of shadow work is learning how to name and speak aloud those names of the hidden parts of yourself. This is one of the reasons why tarot, with its centuries of meaning, graphic illuminations of mystery, and seventy-eight mirrors of sub/consciousness, is such a great tool for shadow work - it helps us to name the unnamable. 

Go out and name your unnamable, witchfolk and plant hearts. Cast your cards a thousands time and wear a pattern into the altar of your heart. Know your shadows and speak your stories.